


like death in reverse

by theroyalsavage



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Canon-Atypical Happy Ending, Canon-typical eyes, Dark Academia AU, M/M, cult stuff baby!!, minor sasha/tim crumbs perhaps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25861648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroyalsavage/pseuds/theroyalsavage
Summary: Martin Blackwood takes a job as an assistant librarian as a means of paying his way to a Master's degree. His plan is to keep his head down, his grades up, and to stay far, far away from his university's creepy lineup of secret societies until he graduates. His plans had not taken into account Jonathan Sims.(Martin is an overworked graduate student. Jon's friend is missing. Somehow, they meet in the middle.)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 27
Kudos: 253





	like death in reverse

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for my best friend/partner in crime/other half, momo - the happiest of happy birthdays to you, i'm sorry I took your prompt and went literally buckwild.
> 
> also! this is not directly a ninth house au but i was extremely inspired by it, in terms of both plot and sheer vibes.

It is eleven minutes to midnight, and Martin Blackwood is nodding off.

Sitting in a broken swivel chair behind a hundred-year-old circulation desk in the reading room of a university library isn’t what Martin would call a _relaxing_ environment for sleep. He’s been up since seven this morning to prep for a discussion in his Religions of the Ancient World seminar, though. At this point, the desk would have to be halogen orange and jumping up and down to keep his eyelids from drooping.

It is eight minutes to midnight, and Martin Blackwood is pinching his leg under the desk to keep himself awake.

If there’s anything he’s learned, in the six months or so since he started this job, it’s that the library changes after midnight. It is a subtle transition - a long, slow intake of breath coming from the fading stone walls of the building itself. In the hours leading up to midnight, the narrow little dark-wooden desks are still largely occupied, dotted with dozens of heads bent low over laptops and textbooks. Right around twelve, though, the chairs begin to empty, dull-eyed undergrads and exhausted graduate students filing out of the reading room in ones and twos. By quarter after, Martin is usually left mostly alone, with nothing for company besides the building and the books and the sleepless, watchful energy of the few students left behind.

Before midnight, the library is quiet. After, the silence is transmuted. It becomes electric with the tumult and fervor of exam season, of university-imposed deadlines, of half-unwritten research papers.

The air tastes palpably like panic, at the moment when night becomes morning.

It is four minutes to midnight.

Before he’d taken the position, Martin had thought working at one of UMI’s smaller libraries might be sort of interesting - if not exciting, precisely, then at least _peaceful_. It’s mostly just desperately boring, though. His official title is something like “librarian’s assistant,” which essentially means that he’s supposed to check books in and out and help with research if asked. A night shift at a university library doesn’t exactly lend itself to fostering inquisitive minds, though. So mostly Martin just sits at his desk, does his readings for the week, and tries not to look like he’s playing Solitaire on his phone.

Occasionally he has to stop someone from smoking weed in the bathroom. Tragically, these episodes are the high points of his shifts.

_Shove off, Melanie, eight PM to two AM can’t be_ that _bad,_ he’d told his roommate, like an idiot, when he’d been offered the job as part of a subsidized work-study program.

_Sure_ , Melanie had replied, taking a long, slow sip of her third coffee of the morning. _Keep telling yourself that, buddy._

It is one minute to midnight.

At least the comp is decent, Martin thinks, as he rifles through his bag in search of his laptop charger. It’s not like he can afford to be choosy. His Master’s degree isn’t going to pay for itself. Especially not at UMI, prestigious and old, built from broad grassy courtyards and red brick mansions and the smell of old money. The kind of place where rich white families have been sending their rich white children for generations upon generations.

On this particular night, the midnight hour comes and goes without fanfare. It’s a Wednesday evening in mid-March, cold and damp enough outside that the library’s ancient, drafty windows are beginning to fog up with frost. Rain is a staple of UMI’s weather, as if it’s built into the university’s DNA, but this winter has been particularly bad. It had been drizzling when Martin had arrived for his shift, though he thinks it may have changed to snow by now, given the icy chill in the air. If the threat of morning classes weren’t enough to chase people back to their rooms, the weather certainly is.

It isn’t long before Martin is one of four people left in the reading room.

Usually, the people left in the library after midnight are a mixed bag, various and changeable. They are, for the most part, desperate students pulling frantic all-nighters. Students who are up against deadlines, staring down the barrel of an econ midterm, late for thesis submissions. Most of them don’t bother with Martin beyond a nod of greeting when they enter and maybe a whispered _goodnight_ when they leave.

There are a few people who have become familiar, though, in the six months or so since Martin started this job - people who he’s helped out with research, who’ve exchanged names with him, who lift hands in greeting when they enter the reading room for the night. There’s Michael Crew, a PhD student working on a desperately convoluted thesis with an intense, almost disconcerting fervor. There’s sharp-eyed but unfailingly polite Basira Hussain, studying law and criminal justice, who works a day job and only has time to study at night. There’s Elias Bouchard, a professor in the History department with unsettling, blue-white eyes. And, of course, there is Jonathan Sims.

Jon sits at the same desk in the same corner of this same reading room almost every night. Currently, his head is bowed low over whatever it is that he’s reading, his back facing Martin. The nape of his neck, long and brown, stretches from the collar of his well-worn, deep green sweater to his hairline. As Martin watches him, Jon angles his arms vertical in a sudden stretch and unfolds himself, getting to his feet. Martin peeks over the book he’s reading - something absolutely incomprehensible by Simone de Beauvoir, bless her soul, for his 20th Century Feminist Philosophy course. He watches Jon mouth something to himself absently before disappearing into the stacks, leaving his paper-strewn desk and his gray woolen coat flung over the back of his chair.

Martin thinks Jon Sims might be an occultist.

This wouldn’t be a completely unheard-of occurrence - not at UMI, at least. Secret societies are something like a side effect of large groupings of people with old blood and older money. This university has over a dozen, from what Martin has gathered: all invitation-only, shitty little clubs for rich white people with nothing better to pay dues for. The closest they probably come to magical thinking is believing in trickle-down economics and following the stock market like some people follow their horoscopes.

Jon, though - Jon is something different.

For one thing, every single book he pulls is related to the paranormal, without fail. The reason he’s posted up in Martin’s particular reading room is because this is where the library has placed their meagre section on folklore and supernatural occurrences. Jon’s already devoured almost every book they’ve got. He takes copious notes on everything, meticulous and neat, even when what he’s reading is making him scowl and shake his head skeptically. It could just be an interest or a thesis topic, Martin thinks, but Jon takes it so _seriously_. He’s tearing through the section like it’s a matter of life and death.

“I’m doing some research… for a friend,” Jon had told him, when Martin had finally managed to pluck up the courage and ask him outright.

“O- _kay_ ,” Martin had replied slowly, looking down at the leather-bound, pentagram-embossed book in Jon’s hands. “For a friend. Right.”

Jon had tucked the book under his arm and looked away, muttering crossly, “I don’t see how it’s any of your business, anyway.”

The thing is, Jon isn’t precisely what Martin would call a _nice_ person. Their handful of interactions have been brief, but Jon can be intensely prickly.

Martin would charitably describe him as ‘grumpy.’ Melanie, who has stopped by the reading room often enough to meet Jon at least twice, calls him ‘a mean fucking bastard.’

All the same, Martin sort of looks forward to seeing Jon. He brings Martin coffee, just occasionally, as if in solidarity for their late nights. Plus, he’s got kind eyes.

_You can just say he’s hot,_ Melanie tells Martin sometimes. That’s not really what Martin means, though. It’s not that Jon _isn’t_ hot - he’s really very handsome, in a slight-statured, narrow-shouldered, under-rested sort of way. It’s that there’s something beyond his handsomeness that’s got its claws into Martin.

Martin is too exhausted for Simone de Beauvoir tonight, so mostly he just watches Jon for the rest of his shift (in a perfectly normal and non-creepy way, of course). He’s acting a bit oddly, Martin thinks. He’s usually very still, sometimes sitting for hours without so much as turning his head away from his work. Tonight, though, he’s in a state of near-constant motion, crossing back and forth between the shelves and his desk, rifling through his bag, thumbing through books with frenetic energy.

The clock ticks past twelve-thirty. One. One-thirty.

At quarter to two, the building’s ancient intercom system crackles to life, and a tinny, recorded woman’s voice announces that the library will be closing in fifteen minutes. The few people still remaining in the reading room stir, begin to put their belongings away. Jon sweeps his notes into his arms unceremoniously, piling up the books he’d pulled onto the returns cart, and slings the strap of his bag over his shoulder.

He checks his watch with a flourish as he passes Martin’s desk. “One-fifty already,” he remarks, and Martin thinks his voice sounds a little… strained. Higher than normal and brittle. “Time flies. Goodnight, Martin.”

“Goodnight,” Martin replies, mildly perplexed.

It takes about another half-hour before Martin is ready to head out and lock the building for the night. He reshelves books, shuts down computers, and does one cursory circle through the library just to make absolutely sure nobody’s left inside. There’s a strange noise as Martin passes one of the bathrooms, a quiet little thump, and Martin sticks his head inside to peer under the stall doors. The room is dark and he doesn’t spot any feet, though, so he closes the bathroom door and heads for the exit. The library’s old. Sometimes the pipes knock around a bit. If it’s a mouse or something, that can be the morning crew’s problem.

At around two-twenty, he steps out into the night. The air is frigidly cold, and it’s still raining slightly, something between a drizzle and a snowfall. He’s making his way toward his car, reaching into his pocket for his car keys, when he realizes that his phone isn’t in his left-side pocket where it usually is.

It isn’t _anywhere_ , actually.

Martin feels a disproportionate stab of misery.

He’d removed his phone from his pocket to check the time at the circulation desk. He must have left it there.

Groaning, Martin pushes his rain-soaked hair out of his forehead and heads back to the library, fumbling for the correct key to unlock the employee entrance. He picks his way carefully through the black and silent building, wishing desperately he had his phone so he could use it as a flashlight. When he reaches the reading room, he pushes the heavy door open. And, as he does so, he hears a Noise from inside.

It wasn’t the creaking door. Martin is used to that sound. It isn’t the settling of the building, either - Martin knows those sounds by heart, too. This Noise is intentional, the sound of Movement.

Someone is inside the reading room.

Someone, or something.

Martin steps, slowly, into the darkened room. The only light is cast by the illuminated exit sign. There’s the rustling sound again, though, and something like a footfall. They echo through the still room like peals of distant thunder.

This job, Martin thinks miserably, does not pay him well enough to get murdered by a serial killer. Or kidnapped by ghosts. Or attacked by book burglars.

“Hello?” Martin calls, because he isn’t precisely sure what the alternative would be, in this situation.

The room bursts into light.

It is not the yellow-white glow of daylight, or the pale hum of the fluorescents built into the library’s ceiling. The light is viciously green, bright enough to burn Martin’s retinas even after he squeezes his eyes shut tight.

There is a gasping breath coming from in front of him. A weird, electric hum hangs in the air. Martin keeps his eyes pressed closed until the light begins to fade, until physical pain no longer arcs through his temples when he tries to blink them open. It takes a second for the bubbling echoes of the light to fade from his vision, like he’d stared directly at the sun for several seconds. When they clear, though, Martin realizes what he’s looking at: the reading room’s tables have been pushed against the walls to clear a large and open space in the center, where an enormous and detailed chalk circle has been etched onto the dark wood. And, kneeling in the center and surrounded by a halo of sickly green light, is Jon Sims.

Jon’s hair is standing on end, floating weightless around his face as though he is knelt at the bottom of a pond. The chalk circle around him is shuddering with static, throwing off sparks the color of cartoon radiation.

Standing in the open doorway, his hands twisted on the strap of his bag, Martin makes a tiny, involuntary, shattered gasp.

Jon’s head whips around to look at him and, okay. Okay.

Martin stifles a shocked scream into the open palm of his hand.

Jon’s face is covered in dozens of open, staring eyes.

They aren’t _Jon’s_ eyes. Jon’s eyes are dark brown, almost black, the color of fresh earth. These eyes are the same poisonous, electric green as the light the circle is giving off. There is none of Jon’s intelligence or kindness in them, either. They are just blank and wide and watchful. They blink once, in unison, and their stare bores into Martin’s like they’re seeing past his flesh and his blood and straight into his bones.

“J-Jon?” Martin asks in a whisper.

The eyes blink again. And then Jon convulses, his whole body folding in on itself, and his hands come up to claw desperately at his face. He screams as if in incredible pain, long and drawn-out and piercing.

Martin recoils, and Jon screams, and the eyes blink and burn and stare.

And Jon screams, and screams, and screams.

Martin is freaking out. He’s panicking and his brain is overloaded and he thinks Jon might be about to die. Before he can think better of it, he takes two massive steps forward and scuffs frantically at the chalk circle with his boot. The line breaks under his toe, and the reaction is immediate. The light drains from the circle like a chain reaction, a Rube Goldberg machine, until it is gone completely and the room is once again bathed in darkness. Jon’s outline shudders , the open and staring eyes burn furiously on Martin’s, and then Jon tips forward and collapses face-first onto the floor with a heavy _thump_.

Martin gasps and takes one final step into the center of the circle. He drops to his knees at Jon’s side and touches his shoulder with shaking hands. With two fingers, he finds Jon’s pulsepoint, drumming against his wrist. Jon’s skin is very cold and his hand is very still under Martin’s touch, but his pulse is beating a frenzied rhythm inside his veins.

“Jon,” Martin manages, his voice quiet and trembling. “Jon. Oh, God, Jon, please wake up, I don’t know CPR.”

It takes a moment. Then, like a miracle, Jon stirs under Martin’s hands. He groans, the sound muffled by the floor, and then begins to turn himself over. Martin gently helps him roll onto his back and then curl up into a seated position. As he does, the panic rolls off Martin’s chest like a tide going out.

Jon’s face is back to normal. Two brown eyes and a slightly crooked nose and a frowning mouth.

“Martin?” he says, his voice soft and bemused at first. And then emotion begins to pass over his face like stormclouds: anger, horror, sadness, relief.

“You ruined my ritual,” he says, but there’s no heat in his voice. He just sounds desperately tired, like it’s been so long he’s forgotten what sleep feels like.

“Your ritual looked like it was about to eat you alive,” Martin snaps back, but he doesn’t quite manage the stern, unflappable tone he was going for. Instead, it sounds like he may be about to cry. “What the _hell_ are you doing to my library, Jonathan Sims?”

“This,” Jon begins. “It’s…. It’s kind of a long story.”

Martin chokes out a bit of a hysterical laugh. “Yes, well, I just watched a man light up like a Christmas tree and grow about two dozen eyes, so.”

“Right,” Jon says, looking a little sheepish. “Right. Uh. Shall I… clean this up, first?”

Martin stands, knocking chalk dust off his pants, and reaches down a hand to Jon. Jon blinks at it, wide and owlish, before reaching up with his own and allowing Martin to haul him to his feet.

“There’s a mop in the supply closet,” Martin says. “I’ll move the tables back into place.”

They work in silence, heads down and eyes averted. It takes about a quarter of an hour to get the room back into a passable condition: floor clean and clear, desks pushed back into their neat little rows. Once they’re done, Jon hops up to sit on top of a desk and tilts his head towards the one across from it in a silent invitation. Martin settles as well, pressing his palms onto his knees and watching Jon think. He’s an expressive thinker. Thoughts pass across his face visibly, like clouds crossing past the sun.

“About a month ago,” Jon finally says, “a friend of mine disappeared.”

Martin makes a tiny, startled sound before schooling himself back into silence.

Jon lifts his right eyebrow at him, a tiny hint of a tired smile tugging at his mouth.

“Sorry,” Martin whispers, folding his hands over his mouth. “I’ll listen quietly.”

Jon nods and says, “Fine. Good. Anyway, my friend - her name is Sasha - she-”

Martin blinks and removes his hands from his mouth. “Wait, he interrupts. “Wait. Sasha James? From the Archival Science department?”

Jon’s left eyebrow lifts to join the right one. “Yes. Do you know her?”

“Yeah - yeah, we had a few courses together as undergrads. We get coffee sometimes. Sasha James _disappeared?”_

Jon sighs and rubs his hands over his face. “Yes. In January, for a week. Sasha and I met as research assistants for Doctor Robinson. I’m not a… that is. I’m not a particularly social person, Martin. The list of people I - I regularly _associate_ with… it’s rather short. So when Sasha disappeared, it hit me quite hard. And then… well. And then she came back.”

“She was found?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Jon says slowly. “There is a person called Sasha who shows up at work and meets me and Tim for drinks and texts me asking for pictures of my roommate’s cat. It’s not her, though, Martin. It’s not.”

Martin’s forehead furrows. He is beginning to develop something of a pounding headache.

“Are you saying she was _replaced_?” Martin cautiously asks.

(He carefully does not continue that question with, _Like Avril Lavigne?_ because Jon may be odd and an occultist and occasionally many-eyed but Martin is pretty sure they haven’t progressed _that_ far beyond the realm of belief.)

Jon nods, folding and unfolding his hands in his lap. “Nobody seemed to notice except for Tim and me,” he says. “But it’s not _her_. I don’t know how to describe it. She doesn’t even _look_ like she used to. She just came back and said she was Sasha and everyone in her life went, ‘Okay, that makes sense.’ Even I… for a long time, I…”

Jon’s voice trails off, his face pinched and frustrated. Martin wants to reach out and touch him again, press his palm against the angular sharpness of Jon’s shoulderblade. He also wants to say, _This is insane. People don’t get replaced by imposters in real life. How could nobody have noticed? How could_ I _not have noticed?_

Instead, he just prompts, “So, tonight, you were trying to figure out what happened to her?”

A little bit of the tension drains from Jon’s frame. He looks up at Martin, sharp and thoughtful and maybe a little bit grateful.

“The ritual I was doing is called the Knowing,” Jon explains. “Which means exactly what it sounds like. That’s what I’ve been looking for, why I’ve been going through your piles of paranormal nonsense. I wanted to understand what happened to Sasha, and tonight I finally found what I was looking for. And I do understand, now. It worked. I just… I couldn’t get out. Couldn’t shut it off. I couldn’t _stop_ Knowing. Not just what happened to Sasha, but lots of things. Everything, maybe. It felt like it was burning itself onto my brain, making a home there.” He scowls down at his lap and adds, like a bitter confession, “It… you know. Hurt.” 

“ _Everything_?” Martin squeaks, before he can help himself.

Jon looks up at him, then, his mouth curling into a real and honest smile for the first time tonight.

“Lots of things, anyway. You think I have kind eyes,” Jon tells him, his grin teasing and smug and _handsome_.

Martin has decided that whatever this Knowing thing is, he hates it.

His face burning, he manages to cough out something like, “Oh, well. You know. Hm. Anyway.”

Jon continues to grin at him for another long moment before the mirth slowly drains from his face. His expression folds back down into something hard and thoughtful. “Anyway,” he agrees. “I don’t know where precisely Sasha is now, but I know she’s gone and that somebody took her. I’ve got leads, starting points. It’s progress, at the least. Now I can figure out how to get her back.”

Martin gapes at him. “On your own?” he demands. “What if something like this happens again?”

Jon shrugs, a lopsided and rueful motion. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But I have to keep trying. I need to get her back, Martin. It doesn’t particularly matter what happens to me.”

Martin shakes his head. “That is absolutely _not_ true,” he says sharply. And then, because he’s crazy and ridiculous and a fool, he adds, “Let me help you.” Jon’s already shaking his head, but Martin plows on: “You need someone to, at the very least, make sure you don’t get yourself killed doing this. I’m good at research, and I’ve clearly got an aptitude for messing up rituals. I want to help. Please let me.”

Jon stares at him for a long moment before slowly nodding.

“All right, then,” he agrees. “For the research part, at least. Thank you, Martin.”

“You’re welcome,” Martin says primly, leaping off the desk and landing neatly on his feet. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to lock this library, go home, and sleep until I’m seventy.”

Jon huffs out a quiet breath of a laugh and nods. “Yes,” he says. “That does sound nice.”

  
  


Before that evening, Martin’s nights off were generally spent on the couch or in his bed, curled up with Netflix and takeout curry from the place down the street. After that evening, Martin starts spending most of his nights off in the library, too.

Instead of sitting behind a circulation desk and trying to focus on coursework, he and Jon spend their time together crowded around a table in one of the group-friendly rooms on the library’s first floor. Based on what Jon had seen during the Knowing ritual, they’ve directed their attention towards the university’s secret societies; Jon believes Sasha’s disappearance has something to do with one or several of them. At first, Jon seems uncomfortable with this new arrangement; he is, as always, short-tempered and prickly and easily exasperated. He seems to be making an effort, though - perhaps even a concerted one - to be kinder to Martin.

Martin had never particularly minded Jon’s grumpiness; before leaving his mother’s house and moving to UMI at age eighteen, he’d long grown used to being an unwanted presence in a room. He likes this version of Jon better, though, likes his softer silences and embarrassed glances and awkward attempts to return the gesture when Martin shows up to their sessions with tea.

Martin knows it’s just because he’s grateful for the help, because he’s desperate to find his friend, and because Martin is a better researcher than Jon had given him credit for. It’s still… nice, though. He finds himself strolling into his apartment humming and smiling after their sessions.

“You’re grinning like a crazy person,” Melanie informs him, when he comes home half-glowing for the third time in one week. “Are you getting laid, Martin Blackwood?”

Martin’s hum morphs into a cough. “I am _not_ ,” he protests, feeling himself turn scarlet from the tips of his ears to the base of his throat. “I am helping a friend with his research for - for the sake of _science_ and the pursuit of _knowledge_.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Melanie says flatly, her gaze already returning to her laptop. Martin sees her mouth tick up at the corners, though.

“You are a menace,” Martin informs her. “Should we order pizza?”

“God, please. I’ve been working on this episode for four hours and I think my neck is about to snap in two.”

“Oh! Is it the one you guys filmed last weekend? Show me?”

Melanie lights up and tips her laptop screen toward him as Martin unlocks his phone and pulls up the number for the pizza place they both have saved to their speed dial. By the time the doorbell rings, Martin is jumping at random noises and Melanie has deemed the episode YouTube worthy. Jon still lingers at the back of Martin’s mind, though, his long eyelashes and the way his sweaters never lay flat on his shoulders and the furrow between his eyebrows when he reads.

_This is manageable,_ Martin tells himself.

He’s not fully sure he believes it.

  
  


It is sixteen minutes to midnight, and Martin is standing on a street corner in the rain.

As March has become April, the days have rounded out into warmer, longer things. Tonight, though, the wind remembers winter. Martin shivers, hugging his free arm around his middle and tucking the umbrella he’s holding a little closer to the crown of his head.

Beside him, Jon is checking his watch. They are standing close enough that the motion causes Jon’s shoulder and upper arm to press, for just a moment, against Martin’s side. The streetlight above them spills a chilly glow over the planes of Jon’s face, turning him into a study of sharp lines and shadows. When Jon speaks, Martin watches his breath issue up in front of them in a cloud.

“She’s late,” Jon says, his voice sharp. Martin knows Jon, now, though. He recognizes the nerves running through Jon’s body like an electric current, recognizes the fear and the worry underneath the annoyance in his voice’s timbre.

“She’ll be here,” Martin says, the closest approximation of calm he can manage.

Jon blows a heavy breath out through his nose. He tips his shoulder close to Martin again, maybe unconsciously.

It is twelve minutes to midnight.

There is movement at the end of the street. Martin touches Jon’s elbow, and Jon turns to look as the woman approaches them, wrapped in a dark coat, her face obscured by a pitch-black umbrella.

“Hello, Jon. Martin,” the woman greets them as she approaches. She lifts her umbrella, just for a moment. It is long enough for Martin to see the jagged, half-moon curve of her sharpened smile. “Wonderful to see you both.”

“Helen,” Jon replies, through his teeth. “What do you have for us?”

“Bad news and good news, Jonathan Sims,” Helen replies.

“Bad news first,” Jon says, immediately.

Helen laughs, a sound like flint catching. “The bad news is that you were right. Your Sasha James was taken by Vōs Nesciō. Apparently she happened upon a member of the group in the middle of, ah. Let’s call it a delicate ritual. Wrong place, wrong time.”

Jon curses under his breath, reaching up to run his hands over his face.

“The good news, then?” Martin prompts gently, pressing his hand to Jon’s back for just a fragment of a second.

Helen turns her disconcerting grin on him. “The _good_ news,” she says, “is that as a member of It Is Not, I have some amount of access to Vōs Nesciō. I can help you get her back. Right place, right time.”

“You’re joking!” Martin gasps. “Jon, this is really good-”

Jon makes a sharp, dismissive noise. “And what’s in it for you?” he demands, and Martin can practically see him bristling.

“Practically nothing,” Helen acknowledges. “Even so, I want to help.”

Jon opens his mouth, his expression furious and frightened, so Martin grabs Jon’s wrist and says, brightly, “Thank you so much, Helen. We need to think about this. We’ll get a message to you as soon as we can.”

Helen laughs again, just once, the leaping snap of a spark. “Understandable,” she says. “But I wouldn’t wait too long. I believe we can still get Sasha back, but I do not know how long we have before the window has closed.”

Martin nods. “That makes sense. We won’t waste any time. Thank you again, for all your help. Jon, c’mon. Let’s go.”

Jon lets Martin lead him away from the street corner, in the direction of Martin’s car. Jon’s shoulders are set in a stiff line, but by the time he slides into Martin’s passenger seat, the fight has begun to drain out of him.

“This is good,” Martin reminds him again, putting the key in the ignition and waiting for the car’s ancient engine to sputter to life. “This is progress. I know you don’t trust Helen-”

“Of course I don’t trust Helen,” Jon mutters, reaching out to crank the heat up. “Why should we trust her?”

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Martin points out, pulling the car away from the curb. “Our options are to let her help us or go back to square one.”

He sets off in the direction of Jon’s apartment in a crunch of tires. When they pass Helen, still standing bathed in the light of the single streetlamp, she lifts a hand in farewell, her face obscured completely by her umbrella.

It is two minutes to midnight.

As Martin drives through the silent, narrow streets that branch away from campus, he considers their options. He may not be as openly resentful as Jon, but it’s not as if _Martin_ is particularly fond of their uneasy alliance with Helen Richardson either. Helen, no matter how friendly she is, is a society member herself. And her society, It Is Not What It Is, is one of the strangest of the Fourteen - not Martin’s least favorite, not even close, but still.

He’s been working with Jon to find the real Sasha James for a little over a month now, and if there’s anything he’s begun to figure out, it’s that he may have just _slightly_ underestimated the university’s secret societies.

As it transpires, Martin’s image of country-club frequenters and financiers-in-training wasn’t quite accurate - at least, not at this university. UMI’s Fourteen are very old - older than the university, even, which has been standing on this hilltop for several centuries. Membership is something of a mixed bag; some positions are inherited, passed down through a family’s bloodline, while some are offered based on merit or suitability or affinity. From what Martin understands, Helen had been mostly forced to accept the spot It Is Not What It Is had offered her. He won’t pretend to understand the politics of the Fourteen, but she’d been pretty clear about her disinterest in the society. She still attends their meetings, though.

In the seat beside him, Jon is muttering under his breath at a rate Martin finds almost incomprehensible. He knows better than to interrupt when Jon gets like this, so he just hums in a vaguely supportive sort of way as Jon mumbles, “If it really is Vōs Nesciō - not sure of our chances - I don’t _like_ \- might be some kind of trap -”

Martin pulls the car to a stop on the curb outside Jon’s little brownstone walkup. Jon’s folding and unfolding his hands in his lap, his eyes staring sightlessly out the windshield.

It is one minute to midnight.

“Jon,” Martin finally says softly. “Go get some sleep.”

Jon blinks. His eyes come back into focus and he turns back to look at Martin, his face a troubled mixture of surprised and exhausted.

“Right,” he says. “Right, yes. Thank you, Martin.”

Martin nods. And then he says, before he can talk himself out of it, “I think we should trust Helen. She’s our best chance, Jon.”

Jon scowls, but he doesn’t snap, doesn’t shake his head, doesn’t eject himself from the vehicle.

“I know,” he finally grumbles. “I don’t like it, though.”

“You don’t have to _like_ it, just tolerate it,” Martin laughs, his voice maybe a little too fond. It’s late, though, and Martin’s armor is tragically and indefensibly down.

Well, whatever. Martin should be allowed a rare moment of vulnerability, in the middle of all of these cults and weird magics and missing graduate students. And anyway, it’s not like Jon doesn’t Know how he feels, anyway. There’s only so much panicking he can do about it before resigning himself to the situation.

The Knowing is a delicate, unsteady thing. Since the ritual, Jon’s occasionally consumed by it, doubling over and straightening back up with too many eyes and too much information. It’s inconvenient sometimes - Jon will start to shudder in the middle of a crowded sidewalk at noon, and Martin will have to sweep him into his arms and tuck Jon’s face into his shoulder until the episode passes. Martin still hates it, a visceral twist inside of his guts. It was how they found Helen, though, and it still might be how they find Sasha.

“Martin,” Jon says, his fingers curled around the door handle, the curve of his profile lit up golden by the glow of the front light of the apartment building. “Why don’t you come in?”

Martin freezes in place, something imploding inside his chest, a firework in slow-motion. “I. You. What?”

“You can sleep here tonight,” Jon continues firmly. “It’s late. I have a… reasonably comfortable couch. We can decide… We can decide about Helen in the morning.”

“Oh,” Martin says, trying to place the somersaults his stomach is performing. Disappointment? Relief? “Oh, yes. Sure. That - that makes sense.”

“Right,” Jon says, and Martin might be imagining it, but his voice sounds a little higher-pitched than usual. “Good. Come on, then.”

Martin unfolds himself from the front seat, swings the door closed, and shifts a little on his feet, back and forth, toe to heel. “I don’t have anything to sleep in,” he points out as Jon sets off toward the front door.

“You’re close to my roommate’s size,” Jon replies without looking back. “You can borrow something of his. I have an unopened toothbrush, too.”

Martin follows as Jon marches up the steps and unlocks the front door. The hallway directly inside the flat is unlit, but there’s a dim, blue light coming from a room directly to the left. Jon toes out of his oxfords and Martin unlaces his boots, and then Jon whispers to him, “I should warn you. My roommate can be… kind of a lot, sometimes.”

Martin considers that. “I think I’ll be okay,” he decides. “I saw you go Super Saiyan and maintained my sanity, after all.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Jon answers, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Of course not,” Martin mutters, and he tails behind Jon as Jon heads into the dimly lit room, pulling his jacket off as he goes.

The flat’s little living room shares a space with the kitchen. The blue light, it transpires, is coming from the television. There is an extremely tall, stupidly handsome man sitting on the threadbare, overstuffed couch, cradling a vibrantly pink drink with a little wooden umbrella poking out of the top. He barely looks up as Jon enters, his eyes locked on the screen.

“Shut up,” the man tells Jon before Jon can even open his mouth. “Do not speak. I’ve sat through four seasons of this shit and I think Mulder and Scully are about to kiss.”

“They don’t kiss until season seven,” Martin blurts, and then he immediately wants to perish.

Handsome Man freezes in place and turns, excruciatingly slowly, to face Martin. His lips twist into an expression Martin cannot even begin to place. It’s a smirk, Martin thinks, or maybe an attempt at fighting a frown.

“Jonathan Sims,” he says. “Who is this?”

Jon is scowling and making a beeline toward the kitchen, opening the fridge to scrounge through it. “This is my - this is. This is Martin. Martin, this is Tim Stoker.”

Neither Martin nor Tim miss the fumbled introduction. Martin feels like he could probably do a backflip if he gave it a shot right now. Tim is looking at him like he dropped from the sky along with the aliens on the television screen.

“Okay,” Tim says slowly. “Nice to meet you, Jon’s Martin. Do you two, uh… need some space? Only because it’s a little late to be sexiled, and I really would like to finish this season tonight.”

“ _No_ ,” Jon and Martin blurt in tandem.

Tim lifts a delicately arched and effortlessly charming eyebrow. Martin thinks he might be afraid of this man.

“Tim,” Jon says, his voice a little strangled. “Martin has been helping me with some research for the past couple weeks and we… we think we may have finally figured out how to help Sasha.”

The amused composure on Tim’s face finally breaks. He’s on his feet in an instant, looking from Jon to Martin with the desperate energy of a drowning man who has just been tossed a rope.

“We’re going to get her back,” Jon tells Tim, his voice quiet but sturdy, determined. “We might have to do something sort of stupid first, though.”

Martin looks at Jon, and looks at him, and looks at him. He’s standing in the middle of his barely-lit living room, his rain-damp hair coming loose from its ponytail and his hands balled into sharp and knobby fists, and Martin just thinks, suddenly and breathlessly, _I like him. I like him, I like him so much._

“You don’t have to say anything else,” Tim tells them. “I’m all in.”

And Martin, like an idiot, thinks, _Me, too._

  
  


It is twelve minutes to midnight.

Martin is standing on the empty street, just outside the entrance to a massive, very square, very gray stone building that looks more like a mausoleum than the glorified clubhouse it is. _Vōs Nesciō_ has been carved deeply in curling letters just above the arching doorway, along with the words, in English: _Do Not Fear the Stranger_.

Martin takes a deep, bracing breath of air. Helen had promised that the Fourteen were having a banquet this evening, a joint event, and that the Vōs Nesciō building would be empty. Her smile had been a little less jagged than usual, though, a little less assured.

The air smells damp and earthy, like spring. Sasha had disappeared in winter. If they get her back tonight, she will have lost an entire season.

“Tim should be back by now,” Jon hisses, beside him. One of his feet taps furiously on the cobblestone sidewalk, and Martin can tell he’s longing to start pacing. Instead, he just tugs the overlarge sweatshirt he’s wearing a little tighter around himself and glares at the door to the clubhouse.

Jon and Martin are both dressed in all black, as though that would stop someone from spotting them if Vōs Nesciō happens to come back just a little too early. Jon’s wardrobe mostly consists of earth-toned sweaters and lots of gray, though; the sweatshirt is borrowed from Martin. Which is - uh.

It’s fine. Anyway.

Martin can feel the tension rolling off Jon in a wave. Neither of them know, really, what would happen if they were caught breaking in tonight. Nothing good, Martin thinks. He’d asked Helen, just once, and she’d lifted the wide brim of her hat just enough for Martin to see the incredulous look she was directing at him.

_Don’t get caught,_ she’d said, and Martin hadn’t asked again.

“You should go,” Jon says abruptly, under his breath. “I appreciate all your help with the research, but this is getting dangerous. There’s no reason for you to do this with us.”

Martin’s brow furrows. “What? No! No, Jon. I started this with the intention to see it through.”

“And if tonight turns into a fight?” Jon demands. “What will you do then?”

Martin throws his hands up. “I don’t know! Figure something out! What will _you_ do?”

Jon scowls, directs his gaze at his feet. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me. You don’t even _know_ Sasha. I don’t know why you’re doing this. I can’t understand you at all.”

The words feel like a blow to Martin’s stomach. He flinches, his hands balling into fists at his side.

“I thought it was obvious that I was doing it for you,” he says.

Jon’s head snaps up to look at Martin, his eyes wide and almost black in the moonlight.

Then the building’s massive stone door cracks open with a heavy groan, and Tim sticks his head out through the gap.

“Okay, boys, all clear. We’re burning moonlight. Let’s hop to it.”

“Martin,” Jon begins, his voice soft and raspy.

“Let’s just do this,” Martin snaps, setting off after Tim.

The inside of the clubhouse is incredibly dark, the kind of dark that’s barely interrupted by the weak, yellow-tinged beam of Martin’s flashlight. Tim digs a second flashlight out of his bag and tosses it to Martin, who switches it on.

The hallway they’re standing in is draped in finery, from the scarlet and gold Persian rug to the intricate sconces set into recesses in the walls. The walls are also lined with bronze-framed, painted portraits. The faces in the portraits sort of hurt Martin’s head to look at - familiar and unfamiliar at once, like people he’d seen once in passing among a crowd, or in a dream.

“Helen said the mirror was in the ritual chamber,” Jon reminds them in a whisper, as if the three of them haven’t collectively been over the plan half a dozen times by then.

“I think maybe it should be illegal to have a room called ‘the ritual chamber,’” Tim says.

“Definitely some immediate red flags, there,” Martin agrees.

For all its monolithic largess from the street, the Vōs Nesciō building’s layout isn’t terribly confusing. The long central hallway branches off into smaller corridors in places, but the ritual chamber is situated at the very back of the building, directly parallel to the front door. ( _You’re lucky you’re not trying to break into_ our _place,_ Helen had told Martin once, her voice staticky with laughter, and Martin had very determinedly not asked a follow-up question.) There’s no door to the ritual chamber, only a massive archway, its edges inscribed with words that look like Latin. It looks like a single block of stone, like it had been dropped into place by a massive hand.

The inside of the room is stunningly boring after its imposing entryway. It looks almost like a boardroom, with a long wooden table and ergonomically-supportive swivel chairs and a massive screen mounted on one wall. Along the opposite wall, though, Martin spots it. Between a mammoth stone basin and what looks like a complete human skeleton with no eye sockets, a simple silver mirror is propped upright.

“Okay,” Tim says. “Cool. Great. Let’s end this.”

And then he walks right up to the mirror and rears his flashlight back to swing.

“Oh,” a voice says, behind them. “Now, this is a surprise.”

Martin’s veins run cold. Beside him, Jon has gone very, very still. Tim’s arm drops to his side, and the three of them turn in tandem to look at the archway.

At the person beneath the archway, really.

At Sasha James.

Now that Martin knows this Sasha isn’t really the person he’d befriended years ago, now that his brain has made the leap and clicked the pieces into place, the differences are obvious. This new Sasha, this not-Sasha, is six centimeters too tall. Her complexion is wrong, her hair is too red and too long, her eyes are further apart and a completely different color. Her smile, when she directs it at them, is cold, completely devoid of the humor and warmth that had drawn Martin to Sasha in the first place.

How could he not have noticed? How could he not have known?

“You really couldn’t leave well enough alone,” not-Sasha says. She’s laughing at them, Martin thinks, even though her expression hasn’t changed.

“We don’t want a fight,” Tim says, his knuckles white against the plastic handle of his flashlight. “We just want our friend back.”

“I _am_ your friend, Tim,” not-Sasha says, and for a second, Martin’s brain roils inside his skull, wrung out like a drenched towel. It looks like Sasha, it sounds like Sasha, she _is_ their friend, how could they do something like this to her? Then Jon makes a scoffing sound. Immediately, the moment passes, and once again Martin is staring at a stranger wearing his friend’s life like a costume.

“It’s a little late for that,” Jon tells not-Sasha, and Martin has never been so thankful for the way Jon’s voice can capture that brutal mixture of disdain and disinterest.

“Turn around and go home, and I’ll play nice. I won’t tell anyone about this little break-in. We can even pretend none of this ever happened. I’m generous like that,” not-Sasha replies, and then she grins, and it _hurts_ to look at. A shadow of a friend’s smile. A mockery of it.

Jon, Martin, and Tim say, in unison, “No.”

That is when not-Sasha begins to change.

After that, things are a blur. Martin knows not-Sasha elongates horribly, stretched like taffy, that her limbs become massively long and many-jointed and stick-thin. He knows Tim swings his flashlight down on the mirror, that it makes contact and shatters into a hundred thousand glittering fractals. He knows not-Sasha screams in fury and lunges in Tim’s direction. He knows that he is in motion, stepping between the room’s entryway and Tim and the shattered mirror. He knows pain erupts in his abdomen as Sasha’s knife-sharp fingers find a home between his ribs. He knows he lets out a horrible, broken gasp.

The mirror’s remains are glowing.

Jon shouts, “ _Martin_.”

And then the room bursts into sickly, electric-green light. Martin wheezes a breath as Jon turns to stare at him and not-Sasha. His face is covered in open, staring, furious eyes. Burning burning burning. He snarls, “ _Get away from him_ ,” in a voice not quite his own, and not-Sasha issues an ear-splitting, strangled scream. Jon’s screaming, too, more angry than pained, and the green light has grown close to astronomical. A supernova in miniature.

Martin shields his face with one hand, the other seeking out the patch of warmth and wetness at his side. Tim shouts something unintelligible, and the light reaches a peak, and then it begins to fade, draining from the room like water between cupped palms.

Finally they’re standing in semi-darkness again. The only light is cast from Martin’s long-dropped flashlight, the one still clenched in Tim’s fist, and the glowing shards of mirror now scattered across the floor.

As Martin watches, his breathing heavy and broken in his mouth, the glowing begins to coalesce into something like a shape. And then, as the three of them stare in stunned silence, the shape resolves itself into the real Sasha James. She’s on her hands and knees, chest heaving, but she’s precisely as Martin remembered her - down to the overlarge glasses on her face and the warmth in her eyes as she looks up and sees Tim.

“Took you long enough” she says, and then she laughs, delighted. “I knew you’d get it eventually.”

And then she’s being tackled into a hug by Tim, who buries his face in the crook of her neck and shakes with heavy sobs. Sasha smiles and pats Tim’s back, reaching out her other hand to Jon, still giggling in what looks to be a mix of joy and relief and bone-deep exhaustion.

Martin smiles to himself. And then a jolt of pain like lightning forks up his side and he can’t help hissing a groan through his teeth. Jon is sprinting at him, his clever, knobby hands pressing over Martin’s, which are pressing over the wound. He thinks it’s probably bleeding a little too much. People don’t die from stab wounds, though. Martin has survived and survived and survived. His mother was not enough to kill him. This will not be enough to kill him, either.

It can’t be. It won’t be.

Martin sinks down to one knee, gasping for breath, maybe crying a little. Jon comes with him, collapsing onto his own knees to keep his hands pressed to Martin’s side. Martin extracts one of his hands, reaching it up towards Jon’s face. His fingers are sticky with blood, though, so he halts an inch away from Jon’s cheek, whispering, “Sorry. Gross.”

Jon immediately leans into Martin’s touch, though, blood and all. His cheek is cool and solid against Martin’s shaking fingers.

“Stay with me, Martin,” he’s saying. “Stay with me.”

“Okay,” Martin agrees easily.

And then the world goes dark.

Martin wakes up in a now-familiar flat, on a now-familiar couch. The lights are soft and golden, and the television is playing another old episode of _The X-Files,_ volume muted. For a moment, Martin blinks blearily up at the ceiling, convinced that he’d fallen asleep in the middle of a planning session, that Jon and Tim have gone to bed and they will all wake up in the morning and start over. Then he feels the pain in his ribcage, though, and memories begin to catch up with him. An empty mausoleum, a broken mirror, Sasha and Sasha, his fingers against Jon’s jawline.

Martin reaches up to touch his side. His hand finds a patch of thick bandage underneath the borrowed t-shirt he’s wearing. He hisses a delicate breath in through his teeth at the smarting pressure. Immediately, there is motion beside him, and Martin realizes with a start that he is not alone in the living room.

Jon is curled up on the ground beside the couch, a pillow from his bedroom tucked underneath his head. He’s changed into an old t-shirt and flannel pajama pants, but Martin’s sweatshirt is spread out like a blanket at his side. The black fabric makes it difficult to tell, but there are slightly darker, matte stains splattered up the front. Martin will need to buy a new one.

Martin says, “Jon?” as Jon unfolds himself from the ground. His movements are incredibly quick and smooth, given the fact that he seemingly just woke up. His eyes - two of them, brown and dark-lashed and clever and kind - search Martin’s face.

“I thought-” he says, and his voice is furious and frightened and heartbreaking. “I thought you were-”

Martin smiles, and winces, and then leans forward and kisses him.

He misses Jon’s mouth, just by a fraction, a finger’s breadth, and his lips bump along Jon’s jaw. Jon makes a punched-out, stunned little sound.

“Sorry,” Martin whispers against Jon’s cheek. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Never do that again,” Jon tells him, and then he’s turning his face and kissing Martin properly, firmly, fully on the mouth. He tastes like toothpaste and coffee. Martin thinks that he would like to kiss Jon Sims for the rest of his life.

“ _Jonathan,_ get your hands _off_ the patient,” Sasha’s voice shouts, and Martin pulls away, face burning, to watch Sasha and Tim enter the living room. Tim’s arm is slung around Sasha’s shoulder, and she’s wearing a sweater Martin recognizes as Jon’s. She looks good, familiar, and she’s beaming at Martin so brightly it almost hurts to look at.

“All this time with you two dancing around each other, and you decide to make out now that Martin has a stitched up hole in his side,” Tim says, but he’s smiling, too, and he crosses the living room to collapse onto the couch at Martin’s feet.

“Stitched up?” Martin squeaks. “Who-”

Sasha and Tim point at Jon in unison.

Martin says, faintly, “I should not have asked.”

Jon shoves his shoulder gently, and Sasha and Tim both burst into laughter. Gingerly, Martin swings his legs off the couch and shifts into a seated position so Sasha can squeeze between him and Tim. Jon immediately leans against Martin’s legs, turning to press his face against Martin’s knee, a point of warmth in the quiet flat. They finish the episode in silence, Jon reaching up to tangle his fingers with Martin’s and brushing a single kiss to Martin’s knuckles.

  
  


It is one minute to midnight.

**Author's Note:**

> hello and thank you so very, very much for reading!! i think that perhaps this is minorly incomprehensible but hey, we're all trying our best out here. if you want to find me elsewhere, i'm on twitter @sunflower_sav and tumblr @theroyalsavage
> 
> title pilfered from jon mark mcmillan's very excellent song death in reverse. his album mercury & lightning essentially wrote this thing for me.
> 
> also, if my latin is wrong i do not want to hear it unless you are mrs morton my high school latin teacher in which case please let me know so i can close this account and leave the internet forever dear god


End file.
